1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is a swimsuit or bathing suit having a bottom with padding that gives the illusion of an enhanced buttock region. More particularly, this invention relates to a buttock-enhancing swimsuit that provides the ability to change the shape and the looks of the wearer's buttock region, and addresses the visibility of padding inside the garment by an outside observer.
2. Description of Related Art
For a number of years both women and men have become more concerned with their appearance and thus greater emphasis has been placed on the desire to have clothing assist the wearer in having an aesthetically pleasing appearance. In response, designers have concentrated on developing garments which enable the wearer to have greater freedom of expression, versatility of activity with maximum ease, and emphasizing the wearer's physical attributes. This is especially the situation with swimwear.
Designing aesthetically pleasing swimwear that meets these criteria is especially difficult in situations where straps, seams, ridges and the like are visible to others. Although there are swimsuits and undergarments that have body enhancing pads, the lack of buttock-enhancing swimsuits available is attributed in part to the difficulty in designing a swimsuit bottom with padding that remains hidden and undetectable under wet or dry fabric. Another factor hindering the ability to enhance the buttock portion of a swimsuit wearer is that a swimsuit designer would like to have a single swimsuit size for different buttock shapes and sizes. However, the general public has a variety of such shapes and sizes making the designer's design for such swimsuits more difficult.
When a designer is considering using padded underwear that is hidden inside clothing, one can assume that the wearer would not be concerned because the padding is not visible by another person. Such designs, while desirable by the wearer do not help a designer in designing swimwear. It is desirable that the body-enhancing pads must not be detectable by an observer whether the swimsuit is wet or dry. In presently available swim suits, when the swimsuit fabric covering the pads is wet, the existence of the pads is quite obvious.
The use of pads is known for undergarments and swimsuits as a device for shaping and flattering the appearance of the wearer. Another type of shaping garment has a cover panel coupled to an undergarment to provide support and shaping to the body of the wearer. Also known is an outer garment and inner liner where the inner liner has a stitch pattern to provide support of areas of the body to accentuate features of the wearer. Additional prior art includes swimsuits having buttock padding members but these swimsuits do not address the practical and detrimental problem that the pads in a bathing suit are visible in public when the swimsuit fabric is dry, and even more so when it is wet.
Despite prior efforts to produce a comfortable, aesthetically pleasing and practical swimsuit having padding that gives the illusion of an enhanced contour in the buttock region, there remains a desire to produce a swimsuit that has certain improved features allowing for the wearer to adjust the size and shape of the buttock and not be visible when the swimsuit fabric is either dry or wet.